Carson tapped his fingers against the wheel in a nervous rhythm, matching the quick beating of his heart. As soon as he turned off the motor, hot air rushed to replace the cooler jets that had been streaming through the AC vents. Within seconds, sweat soaked the back of his neck and began to trickle down his shirt, but he still didn’t open the door and step onto the street. He watched the people streaming by, moving back and forth on the sidewalk, running their errands with a single-minded tenacity. None of them looked up to enjoy the world around them. Most of them had earbuds buried in their ears, the long, thin cords dangling between their heads and their iPods. A few ducked into the pharmacy, their shadows swallowed by the building’s cooler interior.
The pharmacy looked exactly like t
